[HN Gopher] Best Raspberry Pi Projects
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       Best Raspberry Pi Projects
        
       Author : Zaplanincan
       Score  : 209 points
       Date   : 2022-05-03 09:29 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
        
       | philjohn wrote:
       | See also RaspAP - turns your raspberry pi into a wireless access
       | point.
       | 
       | I have one setup in a Raspberry Pi 400 for when I travel - it's
       | configured as a wireguard peer back to inside my home network so
       | any devices I connect to it are being routed securely to there
       | before out to the internet (and I can also access my network from
       | the road, including backups and media).
        
       | phkahler wrote:
       | Where can I get a Pi these days. I have a work project (low
       | volume need about 5 Pi) where I replaced a Matrix Orbital LED
       | display and custom membrane keypad with a Pi and touchscreen. I
       | used my own personal Pi model B but I need a few for the company
       | and they are out of stock everywhere. (displays are not a
       | problem, just the Pi itself)
        
         | dividuum wrote:
         | It's difficult. You can try your luck with
         | https://rpilocator.com/
        
           | misnome wrote:
           | FWIW I found better luck looking for "Starter kits" that are
           | the board + power supply + case etc. There were a couple of
           | sites that rpilocator checked that didn't have stock listed,
           | but did have 8gb 4bs as part of a "Starter kit" for ~PS15
           | more.
           | 
           | I assume it's some agreement not to list all the variants to
           | try to allow hobbyists to still get some.
        
         | vbezhenar wrote:
         | I bought Pi Zero 2 on aliexpress few weeks ago. Can't say
         | whether it's genuine as it's not arrived yet. But I did not
         | find it anywhere else.
        
         | ajsnigrutin wrote:
         | I need a couple for a project, and yeah... good luck.
         | 
         | RPI400 is available pretty much everywhere, but rpi3, 4 or
         | zeroW like they never existed.
        
         | sprash wrote:
         | Many typical Raspberry pi IOT projects can be done with
         | ESP32/ESP8266 based boards which are highly available and very
         | cheap.
        
         | Freaken wrote:
         | Depends on where you live, but here in Canada, PiShop
         | (https://pishop.ca) usually has 4B kits in stock. I haven't
         | seen single boards being available for a long time though.
        
           | phkahler wrote:
           | Any kits with the 7" touch screen? I need some of those
           | anyway.
        
         | antongribok wrote:
         | I actually bought an PRi 4 8GB 2 weeks ago at my local
         | MicroCenter, so they're definitely making (and selling) them.
         | 
         | I decided to check on my phone on a whim. They showed 8 in
         | stock. By the time I got there, 30 minutes later, they had 3
         | left.
         | 
         | That PiLocator site does show the last time they've been in
         | stock, and from my non-scientific assessment, it looks like
         | availability is slightly getting better.
        
       | baby-yoda wrote:
       | with the explosion in popularity of the pi in both home and
       | commercial use I wonder if it makes sense for the pi foundation
       | to shift more towards the compute module style and let the market
       | handle the io/specialization aspect? id assume the CM4 would be
       | less constrained by shortages since theres a simpler BOM?
        
       | croutonwagon wrote:
       | One of the recent ones I did was a Pi-KVM.
       | 
       | https://imgur.com/a/AVxuR0d
       | 
       | Im honestly considering deploying these at work to replace some
       | aging (and expensive) dell, java based ipkvms. I like it enough i
       | made a second one to attach to a small headless desktop. Mainly
       | just as a cheap quasi-OOB management.
       | 
       | Mine use h.264/webrtc or html5/mjpeg and on one i even hooked it
       | up to a smaller kvm to give me a 4 port switcher via the webUI.
       | Pretty slick and all told was under $400 for a 4-port model. A
       | single pikvm, including the case and everything was about 100
       | bucks.
       | 
       | With some systems (ie: supermicro) and a ribbon cable, you could
       | rig up ATX controls as well.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | On the subject of IP-KVMs, I miss1 something that I can plug on
         | the USB of several computers, and access them by the bare
         | serial interface, without messing with video capture and
         | peripheral emulation. It would be something much simpler than
         | the things available today, even requiring less wires.
         | 
         | The main issue I see with it is that it would need to connect
         | to multiple host USBs and only one client.
         | 
         | 1 - I actually don't miss it anymore because I'm not in a
         | situation to use it, but I used to miss it.
        
           | croutonwagon wrote:
           | Not sure i follow.
           | 
           | In this case. Its basically a single USB cable and a
           | HDMI/Video cable.
           | 
           | All the Mouse/Keyboard etc is emulated through USB. Which is
           | pretty nice. That was the best part for me. And with modern
           | standards the lag was noticeable, but minimal. That said, in
           | my cases, im just using SSH or something anyway. This was
           | more for outage situations, or in a situation where i need to
           | make a BIOS change remotely etc.
        
             | marcosdumay wrote:
             | Oh, you have 1 of those for each server, like a normal IP-
             | KVM. So there's a network, a video and a USB cable for each
             | server, plus the server cables.
             | 
             | It should be able to build a device where you use an extra
             | USB for each server plus one network cable for each 4, 8,
             | whatever (if you push it, your entire hack).
             | 
             | To use it, you would SSH into the pi, and use a command to
             | get a server.
             | 
             | The serial interface is quite old, everything tends to be
             | accessible there. But now that you mentioned, I'm not sure
             | you can update the BIOS with it.
        
               | croutonwagon wrote:
               | So you can do that if you want, you would probably need
               | some USB hubs to accomplish, and probably a logical way
               | to map out your serial connections, but it should be
               | doable.
               | 
               | https://docs.pikvm.org/usb_serial/
               | 
               | Or in the case of how I did it, i setup a multi-port KVM,
               | that allowed me to manage x number of devices (with
               | video) from a single unit. In this instance, a serial
               | connection was used from the pi to the actual KVM which
               | allowed me to switch inputs etc, from the gui.
               | 
               | https://docs.pikvm.org/multiport/
               | 
               | https://docs.pikvm.org/ezcoo/
               | 
               | https://docs.pikvm.org/multiport/
        
       | sparker72678 wrote:
       | Many cool ones in this list! Other great ones:                 -
       | https://birdnetpi.com -- Bird call logging       -
       | https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/ -- ADS-B Tracking       -
       | https://pi-hole.net -- Network wide ad blocking       -
       | https://homebridge.io -- HomeKit bridge for many devices/services
        
         | reaperducer wrote:
         | _https://birdnetpi.com -- Bird call logging_
         | 
         | I love this idea. I've just started getting into birds, and I
         | wish I had steady enough hands to build a solar+battery version
         | of this I could stash in the woods for a week.
        
           | jmherbst wrote:
           | I've set this up recently with a cheap(~$20) USB microphone
           | and just have it running on the back porch and it's been such
           | a delight. Loving it!
        
           | greenburger wrote:
           | You might be interested in picking up an AudioMoth [0]. A bit
           | more work as you'd have to manually push through BirdNET, but
           | easier to deploy.
           | 
           | https://www.openacousticdevices.info/audiomoth
        
         | geoffeg wrote:
         | Along the lines of piaware, also checkout https://liveatc.net.
         | If you live near an airport that's not currently served by the
         | site you can set one up moderately easy.
        
       | loginatnine wrote:
       | No blog post or pictures but I have taped an
       | ADXL345(accelerometer) on the back of my washing + dryer and I'm
       | using a pi to notify me when a load is done.
       | 
       | Didn't have the time to put a fancy algorithm to detect movement
       | so it's rough, but it has been working perfectly for the past 4
       | years with no false positive/negative.
       | 
       | https://github.com/jebeaudet/time-to-fold-alerter
        
         | alar44 wrote:
         | Why not detect current in the power cable? Or tap into an
         | indicator light or relay? Way easier.
        
           | loginatnine wrote:
           | Absolutely, however I already had the accelerometer in hand
           | for another project.
        
       | gspr wrote:
       | I'll hijack this thread to ask: What are some good Pi
       | alternatives that _don 't_ need blobs to boot and run, and that
       | use mainline (or more-or-less mainline) kernels?
       | 
       | I don't need any video output, and I'm happy to pay double. What
       | are my options?
        
         | auxym wrote:
         | Pine64 maybe?
         | 
         | https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PINE64_ROCKPro64
        
           | gspr wrote:
           | Thanks! That's exactly the kind of advice I was looking for!
        
         | fsagx wrote:
         | If you just need a tiny, fanless board that runs linux, like-
         | new Wyse3040 can be had in any quantity you like for ~$30 - $40
         | (ethernet only, though). Wyse5010 is a bit bigger and more
         | capable (and has built-in wifi) around the same price.
        
           | jpetrucc wrote:
           | Where are you seeing these for those prices? ebay? It'd be
           | interesting to see what could be done with boards like this
        
             | fsagx wrote:
             | yes. I've picked up a few on ebay:
             | 
             | https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=wyse+3040
             | 
             | Many listings will not include the power supply, but if you
             | have a drawer full of wall warts, you can probably find
             | something that works.
        
         | thecolorblue wrote:
         | Can you explain a little more? I don't know what you mean by
         | 'blobs to boot and run'. As far as I know, the latest Linux
         | kernel supports the raspberry pi.
        
           | flyinghamster wrote:
           | The Pi actually boots from the GPU, which runs a closed-
           | source binary blob. The GPU then starts up the ARM cores, and
           | that's where Linux boots.
        
         | hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
         | The FSF has a page on single-board computers that might be
         | helpful, at least to narrow down your options by discarding the
         | worse options. https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-
         | computers
         | 
         | > _Some have workarounds, but some are fatally flawed and none
         | are fully free._
        
         | ohbeishah9Ienus wrote:
         | http://www.orangepi.org/ ?
         | https://ameridroid.com/collections/single-board-computer ?
        
           | gspr wrote:
           | Those look like good sources for a variety of SBCs. Thanks!
           | But how do I narrow the selection down to my criteria?
        
       | varispeed wrote:
       | I wish I could find a project that would recognise a cat by its
       | appearance and open / close a cat flap based on that. It could
       | also make a noise or other distraction at cats that are
       | recognised to deter them from tampering with the cat flap. The
       | cat flaps available on the market use a chip to identify a cat,
       | but this is a terrible method - it doesn't work more often than
       | it does. Many times my cat was attacked by other cats because it
       | couldn't get in and now it is scared of cat flaps.
        
         | nbernard wrote:
         | Maybe this could be a starting point:
         | https://joakimsoderberg.github.io/catcierge/ ?
        
         | lenwood wrote:
         | Have a look at Lobe [0]. I haven't found a use case for it
         | personally but it looks promising. The caveat is that this
         | would only handle cat identification, you would need to build &
         | implement the opening mechanism.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.lobe.ai/
        
         | AuryGlenz wrote:
         | Maybe things have changed, but when I was looking for doggy
         | doors I was dismayed nobody made one that would automatically
         | open in case of a fire.
        
           | brimble wrote:
           | I'm no expert, but I can imagine that automatically opening
           | an air vent to the outdoors, when a fire is detected, isn't a
           | great idea.
        
         | MarcScott wrote:
         | Use a Pi with a camera module and a passive infrared motion
         | sensor. Take a bunch of photos of your cat and other cats,
         | using the module and the PIR to trigger it. Manually label
         | photos as `your cat` and `not your cat` and then use
         | https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/ to retrain a model
         | based on your cat's image. Then rig a big enough servo or
         | stepper motor to open a cat door, and a big buzzer for other
         | cats.
        
         | sgt wrote:
         | Also looking for something similar. Our cat never comes indoors
         | and therefore has a food bowl on our porch. Several other cats
         | eat her cat food every day and it feels like we are feeding
         | half a dozen mouths, including birds.
        
       | arch_rust wrote:
       | And an in-car ADS-B system: https://rsadsb.github.io/rasp-pi-
       | display.html
        
       | rane wrote:
       | What would make the best platform for building some kind of
       | personal dashboard/radiator on an e-ink screen?
       | 
       | I guess ideally I'd spend as little time as possible on tinkering
       | with low-level rendering code.
        
         | andruby wrote:
         | I bought an inky 7 colour e-ink screen for rpi [0]. Pimoroni
         | offers a python library that can write any image (jpg, png) to
         | the screen.
         | 
         | Any rpi just fits with the gpio pins like a typically HAT. I'm
         | using an rpi zero 2 w. Setup was less than 5 minutes.
         | 
         | I'm now hooking up a system that will take screenshots from a
         | home assistant dashboard and push that to the display every 5
         | minutes.
         | 
         | [0] https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-
         | impression-5-7?varia...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | flyinghamster wrote:
       | If you want to monitor things around you, and you have an SDR
       | dongle set up, rtl_433 is handy. I have a Pi 3 running it to
       | graph temperature and humidity readings from a couple of remote-
       | reading sensors, plus barometric pressure from a Sense Hat and
       | voltage, load, and battery readings from my UPS. It will display
       | selected readings on the LED display, but I mostly just let
       | mrtg/rrdtool do its thing.
       | 
       | https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433
        
         | hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
         | My first thought was, "Why would I need SDR to read
         | temperature/humidity from sensors", then I realized these are
         | more like wireless weather stations.
         | 
         | Out of curiosity: why did you decide to purchase ready
         | solutions instead of rolling your own using ESP32 for a
         | fraction of the price?
        
           | margalabargala wrote:
           | Not the person you replied to, but someone who did the same
           | thing:
           | 
           | Most of the things inside my house are ESP32 or zigbee things
           | I put together myself. Things that go outdoors, though, I'm
           | much more likely to purchase an off-the-shelf solution for
           | longevity's sake. Especially if the whole point of the item
           | is to be rained/snowed on, be left in direct sunlight, and so
           | forth.
        
             | sgt wrote:
             | You can always build a tiny little house for your outside
             | ESP and leave it outside.
        
           | gh02t wrote:
           | These devices actually end up being kind of hard to engineer,
           | measuring air temperature accurately especially can be kind
           | of tricky. And then add in that for a weather station it has
           | to be resistant to the elements and low power. Speaking from
           | experience, you end up spending more money and a lot more
           | work going the DIY route except maybe at the high end. You
           | can get an Acurite temp/humidity/lightning sensor that is
           | fine outdoors and batteries last for ages for like $25.
           | 
           | Not that there isn't value to rolling your own, just I
           | wouldn't assume it's as cheap and easy as you might
           | originally.
        
           | flyinghamster wrote:
           | > why did you decide to purchase ready solutions instead of
           | rolling your own using ESP32 for a fraction of the price?
           | 
           | I already had the sensors long before I had the SDR; they're
           | paired with display units as well.
        
           | simcop2387 wrote:
           | It's not likely going to be cheaper to roll your own once you
           | add a case and weather proofing and battery handling. These
           | things can be had for as cheap as $15 on amazon,
           | https://www.amazon.com/Crosse-Technology-308-1409WT-
           | CBP-308-... or even down to $5 on aliexpress,
           | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003408554165.html
           | 
           | Along with that using 433MHz means that there's a much longer
           | range, and they generally also have much lower power usage
           | compared to doing wifi, which makes the batteries last a lot
           | longer.
        
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